Real Exchange Rate and International Reserves in the Era of Growing Financial and Trade Integration

This paper evaluates the impact of international reserves, terms of trade shocks and capital flows on the real exchange rate (REER). We observe that international reserves cushions the impact of TOT shocks on the REER, and that this effect is important for developing but not for industrial countries. This buffer effect is especially significant for Asian countries, and for countries exporting natural resources. Financial depth reduces the buffer role of IR in developing countries. Developing countries REER seem to be more sensitive to changes in reserve assets; whereas industrial countries display a significant relationship between hot money and REER.

A Petri Nets-based Scheduling Methodology forMultipurpose Batch Plants.

This article presents an optimization methodology of batch production processes assembled by shared resources which rely on a mapping of state-events into time-events allowing in this way the straightforward use of a well consolidated scheduling policies developed for manufacturing systems. A technique to generate the timed Petri net representation from a continuous dynamic representation (Differential-Algebraic Equations systems (DAEs)) of the production system is presented together with the main characteristics of a Petri nets-based tool implemented for optimization purposes. This paper describes also how the implemented tool generates the coverability tree and how it can be pruned by a general purpose heuristic. An example of a distillation process with two shared batch resources is used to illustrate the optimization methodology proposed

La ciència, el web i la ciència del web

L'evolució del World Wide Web (o simplement web) des del seu naixement a la dècada dels vuitanta del segle xx ha estat gegant. La incorporació de nous usuaris, exponencial en el temps, així com l'aportació constant de noves maneres d'organitzar les dades, comunicar-se, compartir informació, etc., han fet que el web hagi assolit en només dues dècades una inèrcia pràcticament imparable. El novembre de 2006 es crea la Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) amb l'objectiu principal de proposar una nova disciplina, la «ciència del web» (Web Science), que observi la xarxa i tot allò que l'envolta. Defensa la necessitat d'analitzar què passa dins i fora de la xarxa i, d'aquesta manera, poder-hi proposar millores o correccions. Aquesta idea implica combinar disciplines tan llunyanes fins ara com la informàtica, la psicologia, el dret o l'economia. Tot això implica l'aparició d'un nou perfil professional, el científic del web, i, per tant, de noves necessitats acadèmiques. Aquest article mostra la feina feta per la WSRI en els primers dos anys d'existència amb relació a la nova àrea de coneixement: la ciència del web

Verifying UML/OCL operation contracts

In current model-driven development approaches, software models are the primary artifacts of the development process. Therefore, assessment of their correctness is a key issue to ensure the quality of the final application. Research on model consistency has focused mostly on the models' static aspects. Instead, this paper addresses the verification of their dynamic aspects, expressed as a set of operations defined by means of pre/postcondition contracts. This paper presents an automatic method based on Constraint Programming to verify UML models extended with OCL constraints and operation contracts. In our approach, both static and dynamic aspects are translated into a Constraint Satisfaction Problem. Then, compliance of the operations with respect to several correctness properties such as operation executability or determinism are formally verified

Absolutely Maximally Entangled states, combinatorial designs and multi-unitary matrices

Absolutely Maximally Entangled (AME) states are those multipartite quantum states that carry absolute maximum entanglement in all possible partitions. AME states are known to play a relevant role in multipartite teleportation, in quantum secret sharing and they provide the basis novel tensor networks related to holography. We present alternative constructions of AME states and show their link with combinatorial designs. We also analyze a key property of AME, namely their relation to tensors that can be understood as unitary transformations in every of its bi-partitions. We call this property multi-unitarity.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures. Comments are very welcom

Real exchange rate volatility, economic growth and the euro

This paper studies the impact of real effective exchange rate volatility on economic growth as well as the euro’s impact on real effective exchange rate volatility. We first show that after a plausible endogeneity correction, real effective exchange rate volatility is negatively associated with growth in a 1980~2011 panel of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. A one standard deviation volatility decrease is associated with a two percentage points growth increase. Second, we find that the euro adoption was associated with a decline of 0.4 standard deviations in long-run real effective exchange rate volatility before the Great Recession in 2008~2009. Moreover, while the Great Recession increased real effective exchange rate volatility by 38~189% of the sample mean for the countries outside the eurozone, the real effective exchange rate of the euro adopters were almost completely insulated. We conclude that real effective exchange rate stability may be growth-enhancing in the OECD countries and that the euro have played a growth-enhancing role at least before the recent eurozone debt crisis

Intervenció des de la responsabilitat social d’alumnat del Diploma Sènior de la UPUA en el programa de Suport a la Prevenció de l’Absentisme Escolar (APAE)

La educación es imprescindible para alcanzar la madurez y autonomía personal así como el progreso económico y social. La lucha contra la exclusión social exige un esfuerzo para que todos los individuos reciban, al menos, una educación básica que les permita progresar en su desarrollo personal y social. El Ayuntamiento de Alicante y la Universidad de Alicante colaboran en actividades que convergen en beneficio de la ciudadanía y dentro de los mismos intereses de desarrollo educativo, solidaridad intergeneracional, cohesión social, voluntariado y formación permanente